Silence the Shame Not the Survivor

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and the legal challenges survivors face. Please listen with care.

There are conversations that shake you—and this is one of them. In this raw and deeply human episode, Lyndsay Soprano sits down with Kath Essing to talk about the kind of trauma that often lives in silence: childhood sexual abuse, the long road to justice, and what it really takes to reclaim your voice after it's been stolen.

Kath shares her personal story—how writing became a lifeline, how speaking up started her healing, and how the legal system, while necessary, can feel like a second wound. Together, she and Lyndsay unpack the weight survivors carry, the power of naming the truth, and the cultural shifts we need to make consent and safety the norm—not the exception.

This conversation also pulls in the bigger picture: the role men can play in advocacy, the need for corporations to step up, and how even small changes in how we talk to kids can shift entire futures. It’s not easy. It’s not tidy. But it’s necessary.

If you’ve ever felt alone in your trauma, unheard in your truth, or unsure how to speak up—this episode is here for you.

Tune in if you’re ready for a conversation that doesn’t flinch. Your story matters. Your voice matters.

Find Kath Essing Online Here:
Website: www.bespeak.au
Instagram: @kath_essing
Facebook: Be Speak Consultancy
LinkedIn: Kath Essing
YouTube: Kath Essing
Book: The Courage to Speak Your Truth

Find The Pain Game Podcast Online Here:
Website: thepaingamepodcast.com
Instagram: @thepaingamepodcast
Facebook: The Pain Game Podcast
LinkedIn: Lyndsay Soprano
YouTube: The Pain Game Podcast

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Introduction to Chronic Pain and Trauma
(02:51) The Impact of Sexual Abuse and Trauma
(05:26) The Journey of Remembering and Healing
(08:27) The Role of Silence and Speaking Out
(11:11) The Complexity of Pain and Trauma
(13:49) Writing as a Tool for Healing
(17:00) The Connection Between Body and Mind
(19:41) Navigating Relationships After Trauma
(22:15) Advocacy and Change in the Workplace
(25:14) Cultural Shifts and Future Generations
(28:17) Empowering Voices and the Role of Men
(30:50) Final Thoughts on Healing and Kindness

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys and dolls.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Before we jump into this episode, a note about our
content today. This is created for adult audiences only. We
advise listener discretion, so if you need a breather, take
a break.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
And come back later.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about
the game of living in and with chronic pain and trauma,
getting to the heart of how to heal. I am
your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones,
and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard

(00:40):
in the chronic pain and trauma world that we live in.
One of the things doing this show every day of
my life, because there's preparation every single day of your life,
especially when you do a show like this, and especially when.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
You care enough about it like I do.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
As you guys know, is that every single day I
am dumbfounded and like thrown in the drugs of my
shower to like ugly cry for all of the stories
that I hear about sexual abuse to women on this show,
and not just that childhood sexual abuse and trauma, and
we talk about it all the time here. Why is

(01:22):
this even a topic we are talking about. Well, we're
finally using our voices, and we're finally opening up our mouths,
and we're finally getting out of our shame chairs wherever
it is that we're sitting, you know, because I know,
for me, as you guys know, I have been through
my own fair share of things in my life and
I'm no stranger to it. But now my eyes are

(01:44):
far more open than they were before. You know, I
always felt incredibly alone in this. I was riddled in
like we mentioned, like riddled in the shame for like
every waking moment of my life when I did nothing wrong.
And that was really hard for socially because I was
raised in a very strong Christian home and it was
kind of like the thing of the Christians that you

(02:04):
shame people. It's it's a jam, you know, that they've
got going on something that doesn't work well for me,
And the shame of it is is it doesn't have
to be that way.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Ooh, that was not bad, Lindsay. I did not even
plan that, But being alone in this is lonely right.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
And I never spoke out honestly to anybody ever when
I was putting together this episode and thinking about the
things that I wanted to talk about the therapist. I've
been to my friends, my family members, all of this legit.
I don't think I was ever honest until about seven
to eight years ago. I feel like my entire life
before that was lies. I never was who I am,

(02:42):
and that's a big thing, especially now that I'm coming
into more of who I am and my why and why,
not to speak cliche, but what I want to be
and who I want to be for this world, and
who I want to be for these young women that
are in my life, any women that are listening to
this show, and also men that are listening to the
show too, because you're kind of part of this conversation.
We are going to speak on fear, We're going to
speak on shame, We're going to talk on impact. We're

(03:04):
going to talk about our silence and bridging this gap
of communication in the realm of sexual abuse, any abuse,
quite frankly, how to advocate for ourselves and other girls
and women, and also how writing will help you do
that too. So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce
you today to my guest Kathessing.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Kath Hello, my darling, HI.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Trained her laugh really hard before we started recording, and
I will not tell you why. We were working on
our vocal exercises, getting our laugh boxes ready to go.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, all right, so let me introduce you to this
hot babe.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Cath Essing is an author, speaker, and educator with over
fifteen years of experience helping individuals share their untold stories.
Also as an adult survivor of child sexual abuse by
a male relative. Her work centers on empowering women to
break silence around trauma, particularly that childhood sexual abuse that
we're talking about here. Her latest memoir, The Courage to

(04:01):
Speak Your Truth, follows her debut Journey to Self and
blends poetry with personal narrative to explore healing through storytelling.
Kath leads the workshop Shifting the Narrative and developed the
Shift Framework, tools that guide participants from silence to self expression.
Woo all right, I'd like to start shifting this narrative
right now. Sta, thank you with what happened to you

(04:24):
when you were a young girl, and let's take it
from there.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Okay. So complexity of my story, like with many adult survivors,
is that I kind of feel like I need to
start in the middle. If that's okay. So I had
a great childhood. I had amazing friends, and you know,
very lots of beautiful moments, and then it all kind
of crumbling down in my mid twenties when I remembered

(04:47):
the abuse that i'd completely blocked out. So I sort
of relate my experience to having various traumas. The first
were the events themselves that happened, second was remembering those,
and the next was re from those remembories. My first
incident that I remembered, when I was twenty three, happened
at my fifth birthday party, and it was a male

(05:08):
relative and my whole family was there, and I think,
as a parent, that really haunts me because I get
afraid of what I'm going to miss. And I remember
that day vividly, and it's taken a long time to
get those pieces of the puzzle back together, and then
it took another ten years to remember that. There were

(05:30):
two other incidents that follow when I was eight and
one when I was eleven, and my daughter, who is
now fourteen, became the mirror of myself at those ages,
so there was a new crumbling and putting myself back
together that had to happen each time she turned the
age I was when I was abused, and that's really common, but.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
At all, Wow, it just got the chills. That's interesting.
Why does that happen?

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Well, I think it's really easy to remember yourself as
a child, But when you see what a five year
old actually, the innocence of a five year old, and
the and and the complexity of how on earth can somebody,
how can somebody do this to a child? You know,
it's that you're looking from another lens, and so I
think that's what it was for me, and looking at

(06:19):
her who's so much like me, and just having no
concept of how an adult could do that to a child.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, and then where were the adults that were around
you in your life? Did anybody know what was going
on or anything at all?

Speaker 1 (06:30):
No?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
No, not at all. And I you know, I think
that's what It's so easy for us, isn't it, to
think about the fact that we aren't protected when these
things happened. But unfortunately, these predators are. They groomed the children,
they groomed the family. In my case, I didn't need
to be groomed because it was a relative. But it's
you know, unplausible that these kind of things can happen,

(06:54):
so why would we be looking for it? And I
remember when I told my mum that this had happened,
my first response was we just thought if we wander
about strangers, that that would be enough. And you know,
I think in our generation it did feel that way.
And so the conversation we're not having with our children
is different as a result of the learnings that we've
had over the last couple of generations.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Absolutely, and I've got I've got nieces and nephews that
are all you know, within the for six years old
to almost eighteen, like this week. So there's this gamut
of boys and girls that because I don't have any children,
and you know, they're they're surrounded by we've got to
give these men, these young boys that are growing up,
like they need to know what's going on and what

(07:36):
consent means and what these you know what.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Look.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
I just my mind is just riddled with so many
things about how these kids are. They're given so much
information between social media and the things that they see
and the violence that they see that's okay, Like we
don't have that if we don't have that open communication
where people are comfortable to share something that happened to them,
and one of my nieces something did happen to her,
and she finally.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Opened her mouth about it. And that's hard to do
when you're that age.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
And it's so hard to do. And as you said,
you know, silence is so complicated, and I often talk
about my silence that it wasn't until I really wrote
the book and started talking publicly about this that I
shared my entire story with people closest to me. And
that wasn't because I didn't believe they could handle it.
It was because I was playing the role of the

(08:24):
good girl, curating my story for the comfort of other people,
and that was at the detriment of my own healing.
So I think that's really common for you know, for
many of us, it's it's such an uncomfortable conversation that
we don't I don't want to see the pain in
my family and friends' eyes when I tell them the
truth of what happened. And so when I finally went

(08:46):
to the police, it was like this release of all
of this bent up experience that I carried, and the
weight of it just was released to somebody else, wasn't
I wasn't then isolated in this story anymore.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Right, Well, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Now,
you went to the police, which is interesting, and this
was a failed attempt at getting justice, I presume it was.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
And look that when I first went to the detective,
he said he believes that only twenty three percent of
all survivors come forward. And from that twenty three percent,
only ten percent of us that go to police will
ever end up in an investigation in court. If we
are one of those ten percent, which I wasn't, only
one percent will end in a conviction.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, why do you think we don't open our mouths?
That's right.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Point wells Ran is to help heal ourselves. That's what
the number was, absolutely exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
And look, and I also think until we share our
stories with the police, and that really is part of
the driver for me to write this book is that
it is a very personal story and I share all
shades of my experience because I couldn't find a resource
for myself as an adult survivor, and there are things
that I wish I had known. I didn't know that
I could go to the police and just tell them

(10:00):
initially and then walk away for five years if I
wasn't ready to go back. I didn't know that I
could start an investigation and put it on pause at
any time if it was too much. And if I
had known those things, I might have gone earlier. And
if I had gone earlier, with the outcome be different.
I don't know, but you know it's important to, I guess,
educate yourself on what options are out there for you.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
You know, one of the things that I think you
brought it up in regards to telling people right and like,
how are you protecting them? I've always been the person
to protect my mother from anything that has ever happened
bad to me in my life to this moment, like
I do not have a good, open, honest communication with
my mom. She would beg to differ. That's because she

(10:44):
does not know the truth. I always tell her, if
you're going to listen to the show, you're going to
have some questions, but she doesn't listen, so Hi, I
would behoove her to do it every now and again.
But anyways, it's so challenging me because I've protected her
the whole time, when I was just this little girl
like nine years old, and then twelve years old, and
then you know, and you rattle off these numbers and
you think, I'm afraid of not being believed.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
What's going to happen if they don't believe me? I
made it up? I'm a girl. You know, you're just
being you know, whatever it is, you're being a teenager whatever,
whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
The excuse that they what would we have a reason
in order to make something like this up when we're
of that age too, like a red manibilative.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
I mean, there's got to be some crazy ass kids
out there, but that was not you and me.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
No, no, And look, I think I had a hard
time believing it myself, and so it was almost like,
how can this possibly be true? Like can how can
this be true? And because traumas so complicated that in
my case, the memories I have are quite fragmented, and
some of them are from literally out of my body

(11:50):
because that's, you know, that was the response I disassociated
to cope with what was happening. And so that makes
it even more implausible to how can this really be true?
Because surely a memory so profound like this is linear
from start to finish, but it's really not like that,
and so I think that makes it even harder. So
for me, it wasn't will I be believed? It was

(12:11):
how do I believe this myself? First? Before I can
even talk about it.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Wow, that's it's chilling because it's true because there is
this like I can identify with that feeling. Not so
much in relation to the sexual abuse stuff. That's a chord,
but me is my pain because pain is my number
one thing now now is it because of all of
the trauma that I'm living in pain? I'm not on
dred percent. We know that this is the case. But

(12:36):
I sit here and I it is mind boggling that
I can handle the amount of pain and that I
am just sitting here talking to you with a smile
on my face.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I can't. I can't wrap my noodle around it.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
I'm always like, my brain can't process that I am
in this kind of pain and still walking around with
a smile on my face.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
And we show up where we need to, and we
put on these masks, and we have these conversations with people,
and we dress a certain way and we carry ourselves
a certain way because we learn how to cult. At
least from my personal experience, I knew I needed to
be some kind of an actress in some way, shape
or form, And that's kind of what I did. I
went down the North thespian and musical theater route, and
I was able to act out all these different characters.

(13:17):
I was able to go into different voices, in different heads,
in different spaces and kind of act out some scary
stuff that happened when I was a kid, and I
didn't even know that that's what I was doing until
I look back how it was happening.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's nuts.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Our brand is incredible, it's so and you know, the
framework that I've created that I now teaching corporate settings
because what I've realized is the numbers around sexual harassment
in the workplace almost mirror the experiences that you see
happen prior to entering that workplace. So many women and
men are already primed to not have a voice when

(13:51):
they enter an environment where something else is kind of
you know, can occur. So for me, the first thing
I do is start with helping it to be jewels,
understand what the beliefs are that they're carrying, and then
how they're curating those and sharing them in terms of
their behavior. And when we can minimize that gap between
what we're experiencing within ourselves and what we're sharing outside

(14:13):
of ourselves, Like that's where peace happens. That's where that
gap is smaller and smaller, and we are just congruent
and honest. And I'm sitting here right now and sharing
every part of me. I wouldn't have been able to
do that years ago. So you know that there isn't
a mask anymore, that this is my truth. If it's
uncomfortable for people, then I'm sorry for them. But the
easy is my truth, and I will share it and

(14:36):
i will keep talking until the laws change, and I'll
keep talking until other people feel empowered to speak. And
the people that are closest to me, my husband, my kids,
my parents and siblings, they're okay with it, so the
rest of the world can deal with it.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
I love that because it is true.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's like, I'm not responsible for how you respond to
anything in your life, whether it has anything to do
with me, whether it's something to do with somebody else.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
I am not possible for your response.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
I'm not if you got to deal with that on
your own, Like should happens to me every day?

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Something crazy happens to me that I have to deal with.
Do I put that on other people?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
I mean, maybe my sweetie every now and again, But
you know, like I can't. You can't decide, you can't
make a decision for how I'm going to respond to
something that I just heard you talking about. So why
would we try to control that? You know, where does
that control come from? Or that fear? I kind of
feel like they're a little bit in the same, at
least for me. I'm a control freak because I'm I'm
afraid of everything. I'm a sissy.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
I'm really not.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I am very very strong, but I also live in
a lot of fear, mostly in the pain department, Like, Okay,
this is it.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
I guess I'm gonna live till fifty and then I'm dead.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Like it's just like I go from one side to
the other side. But so much of that has been
And I know my pain actually increased when starting this show,
and the whole point was to decrease it. But the
benefits that I've gotten out of having these conversations are
far better for my soul and for my heart and
for my future and for my purpose and for why
I'm even here than not.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
So you know.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
So I'm curious, have you ever written a letter to
your pain?

Speaker 1 (16:10):
No? Interesting?

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, So I think for friends of pain and just
have a you know, have a conversation with it and
and find out its origins and its needs and it's
what and what it is trying to tell you. So,
you know, I've done a lot of journaling and my healing,
and I guess the book was that ultimate experience of
here is you know, here is it all? And as

(16:33):
you said, it came out and be poured out of
me in four and a half weeks about being ready, Yes,
that's right, and my hands couldn't keep up, and you know,
and then I was like, I came out, okay, I'm out,
there is it? One month of that, I am a
mother but wearing muhere's my daughter seen?

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Oh my god?

Speaker 3 (16:52):
How long was I in there? Very patient husband, very understanding,
children and friends too were like are you okay? I'm like, yes,
I'm still writing as I'm talking to people, you know.
But I think it's just so we can tap into
parts of ourselves that otherwise we can't. So it's just
such a powerful experience to write and burn it and

(17:15):
no one needs to read it. So you don't even
need to read it, but it's just nice getting the
words out.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
That's interesting, and I do I love the written word.
I am a writer myself to a certain extent of
probably three novels that I'm working on, sure, I am.
But the letter to my Pain I've not heard, which
is really interesting, So making the experience of living in
pain a human one, but also understanding where it comes from,
because I think that that's been the big thing that

(17:40):
I've learned the most by doing the show and having
conversations like this, is that so much of my pain
has nothing to do with my health, almost nothing, And
all we've done is spend gobs and gobs and gobs
of money on my health when it really is my
heart and my soul that has been hurt the most.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah, yeah, Well, sending to that heart and.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Soul that's what we do here.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
I actually have just thought about a story that I'd
love to share with you about my experience with pain,
if that would be okay.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Oh my god, yes please.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
And I think that it's just an interesting concept because
a week before my book was launched, I felt a
bit of discomfort in my groin and I went to
the GP and she said, okay, there's something you know,
there's a cyst here. And I said, well, it doesn't hurt,
there's no pain there, and she said that's really unusual.
That's really confusing to me that you're not feeling any pain.

(18:34):
But if anything gets worse, I need you to go
to hospital because it's like you'll have to get this
surgically removed. Within a couple of days, the rest of
my body just started not feeling right. So I drove
myself to hospital and there was a five centimeter cyst
and that I said to the nurse, I don't understand
how this is not hurting and she said that's okay,

(18:54):
you know sometimes and the second nurse that came in,
I burst into tears and said, I just need to
have this operated on straight away. So I've got one
hundred and fifty people come into my book launch on
Thursday night, and I need to be okay to do this,
like I've worked so hard to get to this point.
And she said what's the book about and I said, oh,
it's a memoir about my childhood sexual abuse. And she

(19:14):
grabbed my hand and she said, okay, this makes sense now,
and I said what makes sense, and she said, Han,
You're not in your body. What is going on in
your body right now is so extremely painful and you
are not even in your body to feel it. This
is disassociation. And so here I am. I've just finished
publishing a book, I'm talking about this topic over and

(19:36):
over again, and I still didn't see that this was
what was happening in my experience. So my reaction was
to completely exit my body. And once I was had
it operated on, I woke up in recovery and all
of a sudden, I felt everything and it was like
a tsunami of pain. But what I feel like happen

(19:57):
is because I was using my voice with so much
author in command. It was like the cells in my
body that just did not fit anymore had nowhere else
to go. So I believe the only way that they could.
You know, there was no medication, meditation, psychotherapy, there was
nothing left to do, and this was just festy old
cells that needed to be taken out. And so that's

(20:19):
what happened. But it was still a reminder of you
know that those defenses of how we respond to difficult
situations are ingrained in us from this childhood trauma. And
I didn't even see it in the moment, and I'd
just written my entire book.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Wow, that's crazy. But yeah, they see.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
I mean, there are so many things that you know,
they talk about how and I know you and I
briefly talked about reincarnation and greet but how how our
body in our response to past lives and how it
also responds to current life and like all the things
like what happened to you will so much of our
infertility issues and our women issues and cancer issues and
all of that stem from that's what childhood sexual trauma.

(21:01):
Here you are in with your pulvis hurting and you're
growing hurting. I mean that's the first thing that popped
into my head was like.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Five centimeters like five centimeters of like pass that appeared overnight,
and you know, like it.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Was like the last of the Mohicans, like totally get
that out of it, get it out of there.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
You serve me anymore? Not the yeahad And.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
So you know, to go back to your point that
my body carried that my mind. I had done all
the work on my mind and my energy even but
my body and my cell still carried the pain of
what had occurred because I disassociated from the rape, so
I didn't have to be in the room. My body
couldn't disassociate, so it carried the pain of what I
was going through and continued to. So I think that

(21:48):
the way that I survived that as a teenager, it
was I swam five ks every day, as you know,
in a squad, and I didn't know that was probably
saving my life at the time. But I was moving
energy constantly and it felt important to be strong. It
felt important to have you know, agency over my body,
and so to be an athlete was the way that
I chose to do that.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
What were your relationships like as a child, teenager, early
college years, Like your relation your romantic relationships like.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, I think I didn't have a lot. I was
really confident, if you know, I had a champagne in
my belly, you know, very and had a lot of
male friends, like I was in a swimming squad with
all males, and so I was but I was quite
prutish in the sense that I didn't lose my you know,
in my own mind, I didn't lose my virginity until

(22:39):
I was in my twenties, and so it was really
much about holding something back from because I'd never really
felt like I felt so much shame about what had
happened that it wasn't a free experience for me. Having
a sexual life, like you felt always loaded with emotion
and yeah, yeah, that's why I think that's the case

(23:00):
for many of us, Like it's you know, it's not
and that's a really hard that's hard damage to undo.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, And I went the opposite direction.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah, and some people do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
And and it sucks looking back at that.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
You talk about shame, you know, you're like, oh my god,
that's how I was acting out what happened. And I
didn't really realize that that's what was going on at
the time. I was just like, you know, a rebellious
you know, teenager in college girl or whatever. You And
then you circle back and you look, as I've been
going through this show and through therapy and writing and
bla all the things that I do looking back, and I'm like,
don I was a little slut, But it's true that's

(23:40):
how I was acting out. But I was also very
relationship Ye. I was in relationships for a very long time,
four year six. Yes, I did want that safety, that
that feeling of safety, which then I would go completely
crazy and be put myself in an incredibly unsafe situation.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
So riddle me that, would you, Cath?

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Well, I look, I do too. I think you know,
I had I remember being at UNI and having a
friend say, you know, you've got to be careful, and
so I didn't really have the boundaries. I think that,
And yeah, and I wasn't aware of what was driving
a lot of the behavior and and you know it's yeah,
it's really complicent. And as a parent now it's like scary.

(24:19):
How do you have those conversations with your children? And
I want my son to be compassionate and kind and
understand consent, and I want my daughter to be a fierce,
you know, strong, Like how do we do all of that?
How can they both be fierce and strong and kind?
And you know, I don't know. I'm still figuring that out.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well, I feel like you as a mom, as a
pretty good start to that. So thank you. All right,
So I'm going to stickle back.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
I want to find out what are we doing and
cause you mentioned the whole corporate working way, Yes, how
are you working in that regard advocating for change?

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Because I think it's a real powerful thing. Of what
you are doing.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
One marine organizations that allow individuals to advocate for themselves
and for others, then we are given an opportunity to
have psychological safety, you know. And this isn't about walking
in and sharing the last stories necessarily with our peers.
But if something happened so I talk about I worked
in the mining sector in Australia, so very remote Western Australia,

(25:18):
pretty much the only female under thirty in the whole town.
So you know, I got attention I did not want,
and you know, and by older men, which was my trigger.
And so I'm carrying this like fear of everyone around
me constantly. But I also had this, well it's my fault.
I've chosen to come here and it's my story, and I,
you know, and just carry this kind of armor around me.

(25:41):
So I let bad behavior happen, like men approaching me
at breakfast at five point thirty when they were drunk,
And it never occurred to me that I could speak
up about that because in my mind, I had chosen
to be there, so I needed to suck it up,
you know. That was That's just the way it was.
And a lot of those environments I've just riddled with
bad behavior, and sometimes if we don't speak up about

(26:04):
the small things, they escalate to bigger things, and then
it costs organizations money and reputation and good talent. So
the approach I have is to come into organizations and
talk about the uncomfortable, so people are really safe to
advocate for their themselves, and if they see bad behavior
for others who aren't ready to advocate that they can
stand up and do that too.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
That's wonderful. I definitely I've only worked in the corporate.
It's corporate America. It's just like a barf bag corporate America.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's true, it's terrible. I had one job.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
In corporate America for a very very short span of time,
and it was like I learned a lot about how
I didn't want to work, who I didn't want to
work around, how I didn't want to mountage, how I
didn't want to be mounted Like every single thing that
I could take away as how I didn't want to
work and how I didn't want my life to be
was in that structure. One of the reasons why as
I was surrounded by provy guys and I worked in

(26:59):
a medical based company for a very short span of
time and it was gross, and I didn't say anything
about any of it. You know, nothing happened, but it
was just like you know, a week from me, you know,
like nothing physically happened where I needed to report anything
outside of you know, making me uncomfortable. But even that,
why should we be walking at see look at me?

(27:19):
I just made an excuse for a great See we do.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
We are programmed?

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Oh my god, a program No, I've not really made.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
An excuse for it.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Oh, I know, but this is what we do. This
is this is what we do. And we're already programmed.
So we're walking into these workplaces and we're playing out
all the values, all of the experiences and the education
we've had prior to that moment. And then you know,
the organizations are like a playground for for us to
all experience an experience of broader world. So we don't

(27:51):
put our stories at the front door next to our
umbrella when we walk in and leave it there. Like
they are driving our relationships and our experience. And so
we need to start being more aware self aware first,
you know, like that's that's where it has to begin.
We have to understand our own narrative before we can
start shifting the broader context of our organizations.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
And I mean, if we could only get everybody to
open up their mouth and share just a little bit,
what is the percentage of women that are harassed in
the workplace ends up in actually something happening to them?

Speaker 3 (28:24):
So I can tell you that specifically in mining, which
is what I've done some research around recently, thirty three
percent of women have experienced harassment, but only sixty percent
have come forward and made a claim. So again, as
I said, there's statistics are mirroring a lot of what
I see in domestic violent situations, in intimate violent relationships,

(28:49):
all of the statistics are the same. So when you
start playing with the one in three, one in five boys,
like all of it is almost I think this big
boiling pot of what's happening outside the workplace is starting
to infiltrate. Yeah, and you know, we can't be responsible,
as you said, for the response of another person. And

(29:10):
that's what makes it so complicated, Like we all have
different experiences and education and exposure to things like where
is someone getting their news? And you know, how are
we educating our boys about like I saw as statistic
the other day to say, in the UK they've just
made strangulation illegal in pornography because the statistics of I

(29:31):
think was awful, like that people who between eighteen and
thirty five had been strangled in an intimate relationship was insane,
like seventy five percent or something ridiculous. So they're you know,
starting to now just say, well, there's this exposure to
things over and over again is what's infiltrating our behavior
in the broader society and then in our workplaces. So

(29:53):
we need to start looking at what that exposure is
and dealing with it from a high level.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
How do you feel that were our culture and other
generations that follow are going to respond to this kind
of work.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Look, I think we're now dealing with a new beast,
which is the online world. And you know, so as
I said, like, if I look at my mum, who
was you know, an advocate of self and worked for
equal opportunity, we were having conversations about transgender individuals being
able to use toilets beyond the disabled ones, you know,

(30:27):
thirty five years ago at our dinner table. So I
was very primed to already understand that I was privileged
and that we needed to look out for those who
didn't have a voice. I guess my new the conversation
I'm having with my kids is about you trust your gut,
you touch the touch the butterflies within you. But that's
really complicated when we're looking at online grooming, and so

(30:49):
it's like, you know, I'm not necessary. I'm educating myself
as much as I can about how to keep them
safe and truly, at the moment, it's I open conversation
with them and knowing that I am a safe place
to talk to if anything happens. But I do believe
that there is opportunities for change. I think that there's

(31:09):
beautiful men in this world that are being sucked up
by the same toxic masculinity that has impacted many of
us as survivors, and so I think once we give
voice to those good men. I actually listen to the
radio on the weekend. It was talking about how when
we look at intimate violence in relationships that one of

(31:31):
the deciding factors of whether a man will ever perpetrate
against his partner or not is whether he had a
strong relationship as a teenager with ale, a good male
figure in their teenage years, and so men have to
be a part of this conversation because the good men
are what we need to help the strong women, you know,

(31:53):
shift the whole entire narrative about it all. So I
think you know that we need to be doing this together.
You know, someone recently said to me, I'm a feminist,
and I said, I'm not. I'm all about equality. I'm
all about everyone having a voice and about the good
voices being heard, not just the noisy ones.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Not well said. And there's a lot of noisy ones.
I am one of them, but a different kind of noise.
And I feel like I've got a good man. I
feel I do have a good man. And man is
he an advocate of what you are talking about and
what I'm talking about here, and he's my number one
champion every single day of my life with everything I've
been through, and he knows it all.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
I mean, he doesn't know it. It's going to be surprising.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
And he still loves me, of course absolutely, because it's
the fabric of who I am. And he's done his
fair share of crazy shit and also has been through
a lot as well. And so the two of us together,
I mean, we all have our moments and marriages. But
it is pretty amazing how affirmed I feel, and how

(32:55):
non fearful I am, and how an non judged and
all of it that I get from that relationship with him.
And it's one that I hope that you know, we'll
be able to model and continue to model, and that
we continue to see these good men stepping up and
helping us use our voices, because sometimes we need a
little bit of We need somebody there behind us, you know,
sticking up for us in the background or are in
the front ground, whatever it is. You know, be an

(33:17):
advocate for yourself and for those around you that you
know love you most. And that's that's what we're here
doing today. So I'm glad that you're here doing it.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Thank you, and you know, and sometimes adacy can be
silence and holding space and you know, I know for me,
when I did I told my story at my book
launch publicly, I had my ten year old son sitting there,
like and friends of mine just say it was they
just couldn't stop watching his face that he was so
proud of me. And my daughter, who was fourteen, introduced

(33:45):
me and did a welcome to country, and you know,
and I'm just so proud of that that I can
tell this story and have my husband there smiling with pride,
and my mom and you know, like, I'm very lucky.
And I understand that that is rare because there's a
lot of people that don't speak up because there's too
much to lose, and so I really want to acknowledge
that that it's it's a very difficult thing to talk about.

(34:09):
And by no means am I saying that everyone should
scream from the rafters. But you don't need to go everybody, no, no, no,
But look, but start with a letter to yourself. Start
with writing to the parts of you that are in pain.
And you know, for me, that five year old self
she needed different things than my eight year old self needed.

(34:30):
So it was like I had to heal each experience
in its own right. And you know there were crossovers,
but but I made all of it mean different things.
So I think that starting with writing out what happened
and how you feel and even burning it. But that
is about what I when I'm saying, speak your truth.
That's that's where you need to begin. And wherever it
goes from there is okay. And if it goes no

(34:51):
one from there and you're okay, then that's perfect, But
just get it out of you.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Get it out of you.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I think that would be the one thing that we
were listeners with for sure, is getting it out of you,
because there is something to be said with you know,
every kind of purging that we do, whichever way that is.
You know, we do our spring cleaning around our home.
We get rid of stuff and it feels so good
to just like onload and get rid of the things
and you clean everything again. You're like, oh my god,
I don't know how it's made the cut for the

(35:17):
past ten years and it's still in my closet like
all of that, Like trim the fat and give it
to people that will love it and appreciate it instead
of a closet getting all dusty. But you know what
I'm saying, it's cleaning out all the spider webs and
the cobbins and cleaning it out and getting it ready
to move and sell and move on because I'm tired
of living the way that I do. Now I'm talking
about it like crazy, and my pain has gotten worse.

(35:40):
So I don't necessarily know that I'm the best advocate
for saying that it'll get better in the pain department.
But I also feel like to your your story and
I'm glad that you shared it about that cyst that
you had. I almost feel like I'm I'm really really
getting close and my body is just like in almost
its worst pain that it's been lately.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
In particular, I think it's because I've been doing so.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Much work that maybe just maybe this is my big
glob of gunk that wants to come out of me
once and for all here, and it's all coming out
kind of simultaneously, like with some yeah, something to be
reckoned with here.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Well, you know, when I remember a midwife saying to
me when I was in labor with my kids that
when you hit transition, which is the phase just before
the babies were birthed, it is when you want to
give up. It's when you are in so much pain
and you just have nothing left. And so sometimes in life,
when I hit that point, I celebrate it. So I'm like, oh,

(36:36):
this is really hard. That means a breakthrough it's about
to come. So, you know, I whether that's true or not,
it's a belief that serves me well.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
I like it, and I believe in that because things
that have happened really amazing in my life have absolutely
come from a police where I'm like, I'm not going
to be able to push through this. I'm not, I'm not,
I'm not, And then I do and I was like,
oh my god, that was amazing. I'm so glad that
I pushed through that. So you're so close, that's wise advice.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yes I am. I'm close. I'm at the first office
of amazing here.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Yes, well, thank you today, my sweet love for being here.
Being a survivor, I know that word is sometimes like,
oh great, here's another survivor. Yeah, guess what we are,
So keep on rucking and keep on surviving. I also
like to use the word thriving instead, because I'm you know,

(37:25):
we sit here during the day, and there are days
and there are moments where I'm like, I am basically
just hanging on and barely surviving. But that is part
of what you go through when you're healing, is you're
like more harpstring to place the music from damn it,
And I'm going to play a song. I'm gonna play
a ditty, but it's just one note. Okay, all right,

(37:47):
where can we find you? I mean, she's all over
the place. She's got her new book that just came out,
Courage to Speak Your Truth, which is incredible, And you
guys have to pick this up and puts all in
show notes and social media and all that. She's on Amazon,
her book, in her second book. I'll put this all
out there, no worries. You can find her. You're all
over the place with your name differently, by the way,
my love so.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
In social media. I will put that everywhere.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
But you can go to her website which is B
speak b E S P E a K, which I love,
by the way.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Dot au.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Anyways, is there anything else you'd like to leave our
listeners with before we hit the dusty trail here, because
I know we're getting closer on time.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
I just be kind to yourself, you know. And there's
many days where I judge myself for not getting it right,
and I think each of those days we're just a
stepping stone to where we are today. And I know
I'll probably fall off that path at some point, but
be kind. It's not an easy journey, and there is
no linear path to healing. It's your path is your path.

(38:43):
And I think that as long as we acknowledge that
it's one step at a time, then we'll all be okay.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
I love that quote so very much. It's it's beautifully sad.
Thank you so much again for being here with us
and for sharing a story and being the survivor that
you are. Keep on truck in and I can't wait
for your next book to come out and hopefully it's
fashion or something.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Anyway, I love it. It's much fun a topic than
seal it is.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
I mean, sweaters and jackets and going to the Met.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yes, totally, even though I feel like the met is
kind of a traumatic experience for everybody, certainly us that
are watching these outfits.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Imagine what these women do to get into these dresses.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
It must take an enclave of people, like twenty people
to get you in these dresses.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
They're painted like, come on, just stop.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
With this anyways, all right, guys, before we jam here,
we do have that new little bite sized extension of
the Pain Game podcast called Pain Bites.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
What crack do you open this week? What stitchs you
back together?

Speaker 2 (39:40):
What moment made you unravel or reminded you why you
need to keep fighting? Talk to me about your chaos,
your aches, your pains, all of your things. All you
need to go is go to our Instagram or go
to our easy link. It's in our bio at Insta
and in there there's a quick little link that will
send you to submit your pain bite, quick little recording
of what's going on with you, and then do a.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Special little mini episode just about you.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
So hop on down to Instagram and go to our
bio and click on that.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Link for the pain bites.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
You are exclusively invited to share this courage to speak
your truth VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the
heart of how to heal with you by my side.
Please follow the Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest your
podcast content, we will be there. Visit us at the
Pain gamepodcast dot com and follow us on all the socials.
Thanks for listening to my little VIPs. Catch you on

(40:29):
the other side.